Intentionality, ADHD, and bio-inspired thinking with Jeff Karp

Executive overview

Most people approach problems with the same thinking and expect different results. Jeff Karp — Harvard/MIT bioengineer and author of LIT — draws on evolution, metacognition, and deliberate practice to break that loop.

Nature has run hundreds of millions of years of R&D on every problem we face. Tapping that library isn't mystical; it's a method for generating ideas outside your current mental model.

Intentionality is a learnable operating system, not a personality trait — and it starts with asking "how did you think about that?"

Bio-inspiration as a problem-solving method

• Evolution is an iterative, experimental process — we are surrounded by tested solutions
• Gecko adhesion led to dry adhesive tape for sealing surgical wounds inside the body
• The Shinkansen's nose was redesigned after the kingfisher's beak to eliminate tunnel sonic booms
• A desert beetle harvests moisture through back channels — a model for passive water collection
• Bringing in a bigger crane is the default human response; bio-inspiration disrupts that reflex
• Diverse expertise in a team mirrors this — engineers, surgeons, dentists seeing the same problem differently

Building an informal advisory board

• Coming out of his postdoc, Karp spent every few weeks meeting someone new in the entrepreneurial ecosystem
• Patent lawyers, reimbursement experts, manufacturing specialists — relationships formed before they were needed
• The result: an informal advisory board able to stress-test every research project from day one
• Early questions like "can this be manufactured?" or "what would a clinical trial compare against?" shaped experiments before resources were wasted

The origin of intentionality

• Second grade, undiagnosed ADHD: nothing was landing, held back at end of year
• A tutor asked: "How did you think about that?" — the first time Karp had been invited to observe his own thinking
• That question triggered metacognition: the ability to think about thinking
• He began treating questions as a survival skill — asking one created a brief window of focused attention
• He then deliberately observed others' behavior, tried it on, and kept what worked — consciously programming his own mental software

Meditation and the pause

• Transcendental Meditation introduced at age six; a mantra is a focal point, not a doctrine
• COVID forced an unintentional pause that made the practice stick
• Sitting with a thought long enough reveals it will dissipate on its own — without needing to act on it
• The brain needs pause time to sync conscious and subconscious processing
• Back-to-back meetings deplete cognitive bandwidth; a 10-minute gap between meetings produces unexpected connections
• Shower thoughts, commute thoughts, exercise thoughts — all arise in unscheduled white space
• Aqua Notes (waterproof notepad for the shower) as a low-friction capture tool

Recovering from public failure

• TED Med 2014: fully memorized 18-minute talk, five HD cameras, live-streamed globally
• Mid-talk, Karp stopped dead — mind blank — for 15 seconds
• The advice given beforehand: don't cry, don't run off the stage, just stand and smile
• A blank slide in his deck turned out to be a deliberate cue; advancing past it unlocked the next section
• Audience members said it made him more human — failure creates connection, not just cost
• The experience erased a shame imprint from a grad-school talk and permanently improved his stage confidence
• One of his book's chapters: see failure as a step in the iterative process, not the end

Living with ADHD as an adult

• River metaphor: bumping every rock, exploring every branch, arriving late but with deep knowledge others skipped
• ADHD as a superpower for pattern recognition, environmental observation, and connecting disparate ideas
• Distraction disruptor: write the word "distraction" on paper, add a check mark each time you catch yourself distracted — builds awareness without suppression
• Challenge clock: set a timer when working; when distraction urges arise, ask "can I go one more minute?" — often extends focus to 10–15 minutes
• These tools are cycled situationally, not applied rigidly every day

Applying presence to public speaking

• Speaking to 4,000 people is overwhelming; speaking to one person in that room is not
• The best speakers pick a pair of eyes, hold a real conversation for a minute, then move to another
• Glazing over the room or scanning back and forth signals no one is being seen
• Stopping mid-talk is recoverable; naming the lapse out loud ("I think I lost my place") often deepens audience connection
• The trumpet player who lost part of his face to cancer: if you can get one note, you can probably get two